The Picassos delved into my favorite era today... the Impressionist Era! The 1980s were golden for music and the 1800s produced some of the greatest artists of all time... simple facts in my humble opinion! 🤓 (oxymoron much 😀)

Anyway, we talked about how art was changed by these artists both in terms of subject matter and in terms of style and then they attempted this little number by Claude Monet.

It's called The Isle Grande Jatte and it was completed in 1878. Notice how you can see some houses across the river as well as a distant field and how Monet uses small brushstrokes and lots of tints and shades so we can imagine the light pouring through those trees and we can feel the way the artist felt standing there squinting in the sun and capturing it all for us to admire centuries later.

We started off this class with a little cartoon about the artist Claude Monet so my little darlings could envision something about the man whose style we were going to try to mimic!

Monet painted apple trees in blossom many many times but for my Doodlebugs I thought we would focus just on the flowers and paint them huge but using his technique of blending colors right on the canvas or in this case paper! We looked at Monet's flowers and some pictures of real flowers then they drew and painted their own. They were thrilled with seeing the changes in the colours by adding more white and the results are simply gorgeous. Although I tried to get them to leave traces of white in their flowers most of them couldn't resist mixing the paint until they got a smooth lighter tint... but aah well! All in good fun!

Of course they also drew leaves and cut their flowers themselves so they're getting lots of that much needed cutting practice parents 😃

Line is one of the good old elements of art and my Picassos spent the week's class getting pretty familiar with it. ? We talked about the different types of lines (straight, curved, zig zag, diagonal and spiral just to name a few) and then I introduced them to our project for the day.

They had to create a landscape showing perspective (uh hum... we use big words in this class ?) and they came up with imaginative pictures showing a foreground, middle ground and background, and then they filled the space with different types of lines to show movement and space. It might sound like a tall order for 7 and 8 year olds, (the younger end of the age spectrum) but I think they all did a marvelous job!

My tiniest artists were not to be left out of our Republic Day celebrations... ooh noooo! 😀 We talked about what it means to be a Republic and they learned that the President was our Head of State to which one little cutie replied "hmmm I did not know that." Lol So we painted President's House today - Doodlebug style which means His Excellency's abode is portrayed in a very psychedelic way... Because well these children are between the ages of 4 and 6 and in their eyes everything that isn't rainbow-coloured should be!

The Picassos finally painted their clay Scarlet Ibises today and goodness they are so gorgeous! 😍😍 They also took care to paint the beaks and some children added black feathers in the tails. Take a look at their beautiful birds!

I just love this book! It's an adorable story of Gerald the Giraffe who is self-conscious about his dancing because of his long skinny legs, but by the end of the book Gerald is jigging and jiving and he's forgotten all about his legs, he found his own way to dance... which is a lesson we can all benefit from, both big and small. The story is told in such a rhythmic voice that the kiddos were actually leaning forward in their seats, (so cute) and this style makes it easy for little ones to follow so by the end they were all cheering for Gerald! Hooray... "we can all dance when we find music that we love!"

This project is also packed with lots of steps for my little Doodlebugs that are meant to strengthen their motor-skills and improve their hand-eye co-ordination and the end result is so precious! Definitely one for the halls of fame parents ;)

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​It's the first day of art class and my Doodlebugs are just back out to school after the looooooong vacation, so I wanted to start off with an entertaining little story but this Eric Carle gem is not just fun it also has a great message! Not to mention it's Eric Carle so the illustrations are terrific!

The little Hermit Crab has outgrown his shell and needs to find a bigger one, much like all of my little Doodlebugs who have just either started ​'BIG school' or moved up into Second Year Infants!

At first he is frightened and a little nervous but as the story goes on he gets more and more excited at all the possibilities for his new home and he makes a lot of new friends! It's easy to see the parallels :) My little friends were all eager to share how they felt on their first day of school and after our little chat they were excited to draw and paint the hermit crab!

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The start of this term is smack in the middle of Independence Day on August 31st and Republic Day on September 24th so of course my little smarty-pants and I discussed what these days mean and the symbols that come along with our Republican status.

For our art project we will be sculpting the gorgeous Scarlet Ibis out of clay! There's also another reason I decided to highlight our gorgeous national bird and it's sadly because some people have decided that the Ibis is fair game for wild meat 😩. It saddens me to no end to know that these lovely protected creatures have become a target in a place that is literally supposed to be a SANCTUARY. Let that sink in. So our art is dedicated to these fine birds, OUR national birds and I hope that we can all take a moment to appreciate their beauty and vow to blow the whistle where and when we can to ensure their survival.

So the Picassos sculpted them today and they'll dry and wait to be painted in their scarlet colour next week! Take a look :)

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